The subject matter herein relates generally to systems for determining a crimp height of a crimped electrical connection.
Terminals are typically crimped onto wires by means of a conventional crimping press having an anvil for supporting the electrical terminal and a ram that is movable toward and away from the anvil for crimping the terminal. In operation, a terminal is placed on the anvil, an end of a wire is inserted into the ferrule or barrel of the terminal, and the ram is caused to move toward the anvil to the limit of the stroke of the press, thereby crimping the terminal onto the wire. The ram is then retracted to its starting point.
In order to obtain a satisfactory crimped connection, the crimp height and other characteristics of the crimped terminal must be closely controlled. The crimp height of a terminal is a measure of height or maximum vertical dimension of a given portion of the terminal after crimping. Ordinarily, if a terminal is not crimped to the correct crimp height for the particular terminal and wire combination, an unsatisfactory crimped connection will result. Some systems measure crimp height by manual measurements of the terminals which can be slow and tedious. Some systems measure crimp height based on ram displacement measurements. For example, simple non-destructive means of detecting such defective crimped connections by accurately measuring crimp height during the crimping process is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,856,186 and 4,916,810 to Yeomans.
New technologies in ultrasonic monitoring have been proposed for use in crimp quality monitoring. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,181,942 describes an ultrasonic device and method for measuring crimp connections by comparing signals with signals from a previous crimp that was determined to be desirable through destructive testing.
A need remains for a crimp quality monitoring system that uses ultrasonic monitoring to determine a crimp height of a crimped terminal.